Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Volume 3 (Summer 1944), p. 97.
A LITTLE OF WHAT ARKANSAS WAS LIKE
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
BY
DALLAS T. HERNDON
STATE HISTORIAN OF ARKANSAS
George William Featherstonhaugh, one of several enterprising Englishmen who wrote well and wisely of America in the early days of the Republic, made a tour of the South in 1834, which took him to Arkansas Territory in the latter part of that year. Thomas Nuttall, another of these English tourists whose visit to Arkansas in 1819 is memorable for the account he afterwards wrote of his travels, was looking, first of all, for rare and unknown forms of vegetation that he hoped he might find. Featherstonhaugh was, too, a specialist, having as the first interest of his tour a study of the rock formations of the Ozark county. He, too, like Nuttall, afterwards wrote a book of his travels, which is still much prized as a contemporary source of discerning information. Featherstonhaugh's book, titled "Excursion Through the Slave States," begins at the beginning of the author's tour from Baltimore, Maryland, to Arkansas, through Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. It was in St. Louis, Missouri, that he found it necessary to provide himself with his own means of conveyance, because as he wrote, "We were now at the end of all stage coach travelling." For the conveyance of himself, his son, and the luggage they carried he brought "a nice little Dearborn wagon" and a stout, young horse, to which he gave the name "Missouri."
